A living book on mental health

It was a toaster that first made Darren Dorey realise something was wrong. As he says, things came to a head one morning when he 'got the toaster out of the cupboard and stared at it blankly, and then at my four children who were waiting for Dad to make their breakfast. The problem was that Dad couldn't work out what he was supposed to do with the bloody silver thing in front of him'.

There had been little signs before that moment - a loss of confidence was affecting his job as a sales rep, and he increasingly found himself starting five jobs at once and not finishing any of them. He describes feelings of living in a fog, making it difficult for him to function - later the fog would turn into a glass box with no exit. Although his initial contact with a GP provided some relief and a script for anti-depressants, he made the mistake of not taking them after feeling good for a couple of months, ultimately compounding his problems.

A series of unfortunate events in quick succession tipped Darren over the edge - in the space of a couple of weeks he lost his job, the family house, and worst of all, his sight as a result of diabetes. The months that followed included spells in a psychiatric hospital, the deterioration of his family life, and two suicide attempts. That was only a short time ago, but meeting Darren today is a different story - with the help of local psychiatric services he's somehow managed to get his life back on track and is currently training for a new career as a counsellor - given what he's been through, there's a fair chance he'll be able to sympathise with people suffering from depression and other mental illnesses.

It's an odd experience to talk to someone who's had such dark times in their life - to meet someone who has such a positive role to play in the community and then discover they were only seconds away from being a notice in the death section of the paper is quite sobering. It also emphasises the importance of a week like mental health week and the need to recognise and treat these sorts of problems long before they get to the stage Darren progressed to.

This Friday in Warrnambool Darren will be one of ten 'books' you'll be able to borrow as a part of a living library which has been put together for mental health week. The other books include people who've either experienced or worked with people suffering from a mental illness - one of those is John Sedgley, the manager of respite at Aspire. John stresses the importance of the carer in these situations - after all, the people who live with the patient are the ones who get to see everything, so they need to understand it and also be recognised for the role they play. To that end, it seems carers are being increasingly well looked after with carer's weekends and support groups becoming more popular. With the statistics indicating that one in five people will have a mental illness at some point in their lives, it's important for everyone to be more aware and understanding, so if you're in Warrnambool, take the time on Friday afternoon to borrow a living book and maybe learn a little more about mental illness.